Permanent Limiting account without any notice over vague excuse

[gem3]

Paypal suddenly essentially blocked *permanently* my account with no warning because I listed for sale an over the counter vitamin on ebay! Below is the communication and my reply which was dealt with a canned response (if even was read by anyone). I am a loyal customer, very respectful to the regulations since 2006. They could have warned me if something they think is not according to the rules (which even this is debatable as you can read in my reply). But permanent banning of a customer, essentially blocking him out of ebay too with no warning? This is good business practice? Does anyone have experience over this and can help? I am issuing complaints in any organization I can find and share this on facebook, twitter and all the relevant forums. I still can't believe paypal's practice of sudden death with no warning whatsoever and no previous problems of any sort.

My response, followed by paypal's emails

Dear Sir or Madame,

I in no way intended to violate the policy. ​This listing is for an OTC vitamin (folic acid) that ebay permits as it is mentioned in this link:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/prescriptions.html

What are the guidelines?

Prescription and over-the-counter drugs

Allowed

Most over-the-counter (OTC) products, including:

• Allergy medications that don't contain pseudoephedrine

• Antacids (see the restriction on non-prescription strength OTC medications below)

• Nicotine gums and patches

• Pain relievers

• Vitamins

 

Restricted

• Listings for ephedra-free products must state that the item doesn't contain any ephedra. The listing needs to include photos that show that the item is ephedra-free.

• Over-the-counter medications that contain non-prescription strengths of prescription drugs can be listed, but the concentration of the prescription drug needs to be mentioned in the listing. For example, omeprazole (a prescription drug) can be listed, as long as it's clear that it's the 20mg version.

• Flea control products (such as Program, Advantage, and Top Spot) must be sealed in their original packaging.

• Heartworm medicines for animals (such as Sentinel, Revolution, Heartgard, and Interceptor) can only contain non-prescription forms of ivermectin, and the listings must include the NADA or ANADA number.

• Descriptions of herbal and holistic remedies and other items can't compare the products to prescription drugs, imply any non-FDA-approved treatments, or be marketed as having the same results as a prescription drug.

 

Not allowed

Any substance the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines as requiring a prescription, including:

• Allergy medicines

• Contraceptives, including implantable devices

• Ephedrine in any form or combination

• Injectable substances, including vitamins, whether for humans or animals

• Insulin in all forms, including non-prescription

• Nicotine inhalers (these require a prescription in the US)

• Pseudoephedrine in any form or combination

• Items that may not require a prescription, but are only available for sale through a licensed physician

• Products containing ephedra or ma huang

​​This vitamin is otc in Greece. Moreover there are literally hundreds of listings of this vitamin on ebay accepting paypal. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xfolic+acid.TRS0&_n...

As a matter of cooperation and compliance in order to sort this matter out I ended the listing altogether awaiting for your reply.

I am a loyal, cooperative and (mostly) happy customer since 2006 and permanent banning of my account without any warning for listing an otc vitamin is incomprehensible to me.

In PayPal's  Acceptable Use Policy https://www.paypal.com/gr/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full it is referring to "prescription drugs" only and only for pre-approval. Nowhere in the user agreement is reads for

"prescription drugs that violate applicable laws or industry regulations

or for products that present a risk to consumer safety. PayPal considers

the marketing of a product and may restrict transactions for products

marketed to act like or function the same as a prescription drug. PayPal

also may restrict transactions for recalled drugs, unapproved drugs and

dietary supplements that have been banned by governmental agencies."

that you referred to and even if it did I would not consider this vitamin to be such by any  stretch of the imagination.

Kindly get back to me asap in order to resolve this matter.

Yours Sincerely,

Georgios <removed>

Paypal's initial email

Dear xxxxxxxx,

We have recently reviewed your PayPal account activity, and determined that

you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales

/ offers of Prescription Drugs such as http://www.ebay.com/sch/xxxx on ebay.com, user ID: xxxxx.

As a result, your account has been permanently limited and this cannot be

appealed.

Per the PayPal User Agreement, when we permanently limit an account due to

an Acceptable Use Policy violation, we may hold any available balance in

your PayPal account  for up to 180 days. We will review your account at 30

days from the date of this email and determine if you have any outstanding

disputes or claims.  If there is a balance remaining in your account at

this time, we will review your account every 30 days until either all your

money has been made available to you for withdrawal, or a period of 180

days from the date your account was limited is reached. Please log in to

your PayPal account and verify that your account information is accurate,

as PayPal cannot be held responsible for incorrect information provided by

the account holder.

Please remove all references to PayPal from your website/s and/or

auction/s. This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but

also the PayPal logo and PayPal shopping cart.

The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal  reserves the right to limit

an account for any violation of the PayPal User Agreement, including the

Acceptable Use Policy.

Under the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used for the sale

of prescription drugs that violate applicable laws or industry regulations

or for products that present a risk to consumer safety. PayPal considers

the marketing of a product and may restrict transactions for products

marketed to act like or function the same as a prescription drug. PayPal

also may restrict transactions for recalled drugs, unapproved drugs and

dietary supplements that have been banned by governmental agencies.

You can view the complete PayPal Acceptable Use Policy by clicking the

"Legal" link at the bottom of any PayPal page and clicking "PayPal

Acceptable Use Policy". You can also find some more information on the

PayPal Acceptable Use Policy on our Help Center.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you have any questions,

please contact the PayPal Brand Risk Management Department at

xxxx

Sincerely,

Mandy

PayPal, Brand Risk Management

Paypal's canned response to my appeal

Dear xxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern regarding the limitation on your account.

We regret to inform you that we cannot overturn the limitation on your account. Due to the violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy, your account has been permanently limited.

The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy.

Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used for the sale of prescription drugs that violate applicable laws or industry regulations or for products that present a risk to consumer safety. PayPal considers the marketing of a product and may restrict transactions for products marketed to act like or function the same as a prescription drug. PayPal also may restrict transactions for recalled drugs, unapproved drugs and dietary supplements that have been banned by governmental agencies.

If you have any questions, please contact the PayPal Brand Risk Management Department at  xxxxx

Sincerely,

Ruslan

PayPal, Brand Risk Management

[Whac-A-Mole]

permanent restriction is permanent,find another payment processor.

we are just volunteers ,not Paypal

[gem3]

Thank you Sumiko for taking the time and effort to read the whole post. Your conclusion is that I needed clarification for "permanent". I wouldn't expect that this forum would be so helpful. Does actual paypal people read any of the emails or the forums? Probably not. I am very sorry for that, after 11 years.

[mohammad15]

If anyone has been limited or banned then you will notice you can not remove your credit card or bank details in these situation you can file a case with your local court. All you are doing is playing by paypal ways since they have served you with an notice of right to refuse service then there is no reason for them to hold your finacial details they are not an credit reference angency nor are they an official government department and they have CLEARLY stated they are not an bank they have also clearly stated in the notice to remove any logo etc as they are no longer want to deal with you so in future if they decided to charge your bank or credit card or if they wanted to communicate with you then how the **bleep** are you supposed to know they are genuine since you have removed all references of them. Over 95% of cases are won in court by account holders many people told me to change my bank details but why should i do that instead i took those arrogant filth to court and won as the presiding judge clearly stated paypal terminated the service agreement so there for any sensetive finacial details should be erased according to the data protection law IF the claimant requests it the only thing they can keep for a cetain period of time is your trasaction history but this has to be archived and not in active ready status and can not be used to take further payments be it fees or chargeback those has to be served as notice in the form of bills.

[mohammad15]

Hey Gem3 , Am in the same boat i was a powerseller for years both on ebay and my own website generating over 1.5 million pounds in transaction with paypal every 2 years my listing was an non prescription herbal tablets namely nuhair dht blocker then one morning i got an email of lifetime ban because that herbal supplement violates there so called AUP. So naturally i called and emailed all department of paypal stating the situation and even took down the listing i even pointed out that no sales was made on this item as it was a new product i listed so how can i break the AUP even if no sales where made but given that paypal employs the low life filth of the earth who is in control of limiting peoples account and have no idea the misery they bring upon hardworking people is beyond me. A short insight of animals that ban people on these small misunderstanding or in many cases irrelevent are people who can not get or find a decent job and wants to play man / woman in authority but in reality there life is so full of misery they enjoy making others a misery everyone from the police to normal labourer makes mistakes but paypal employees think they are godlike fiqure in fact if i saw one of these animals i would really like to show how animals they are but they would not show them self and hide behind a desk like a cockroach feeding of peoples misery and then you have these contributors on here claiming paypal is god and makes no mistakes but the fact is they do and i just received an email apologizing for there error in taking fees that was not meant to be taken they will also make you feel like an criminal saying things like why are you hating paypal as they are not holding you to ransom but the fact is they are holding you back as in order to trade on ebay you have to have paypal in fact if ebay started to accept payments like amazon theni can bet my entire families life paypal will go bankrupt the very same day.All i can say is discourage as many people from using paypal am personally investing mt own money to bring paypal shares down and we suceeded in bringing down to $40 a shares few months ago looks like i have to reactivate my hundred plus bloggers again as they seem to creep up back over $50 a share , Here is an example google this PP-005-747-841-488 to see some of the effects. Even murderers in many cases given a 2nd chance but paypal in its god like attitude bans you for LIFE many times for no or very minor instances just remember paypal every company has its days and your days are numbered as you have created vast amount of enemy and some of them are very good at bringing companies to its knees as long as you are on the internet even government sites are brought down just heed the advice of what you are doing.

[Whac-A-Mole]

Unfortunately Paypal is now trading way over 40,it must be $66 the last time I checked.

I would n ot invest in PYPL,by 2020,its incestuous relationship with Ebay is over,Ebay is free to create or sign up with another loser.

Paypal has no business to extend its tentacles so far and wide 200 countries and 23 currencies when its customer service rep cant find his way to the outhouse!

and those new products Paypal is hyping -PAD,EXTRA MC,prepaid debit ,working capital loan,line of credit,Paypal is loaded with toxic loans ,stay away from PYPL 

[mohammad15]

They are hovering at below $60 it barely goes above $58 however they do seem to boast that they have over 210 million users but fail to mention 90% of those accounts are tied with ebay on the surface they have spinned off from ebay but deep in there core they are very much one company as ebay still won't allow 3rd party payment the only ones that are allowed is braintree which is owned by paypal and the other is authorized.net am with stripe now and can happily say my website sales has increased by 5% as it allows anyone from any country to buy from our sites the only section that we lost is ebay sales even if we are back 100% with our sales we will not forget paypal soul less tactics we used to buy our inventory using paypal but now refuse to buy anything that has paypal processor after our incident most of our partners have also adopted a secondary processor. I did manage barge in to there registered office in richmond to just ask one simple question to there employee and that fat moron cameron mclean that question was have they ever made an error or mistake in there entire life but before i could get my answer the place was swamped with police as they must have been thinking the worst is about to happen as i am brown in color and a name khan and mohammad must have freaked them out.

[William2293]

Looks like I'm shopping on Amazon now

[DFrost]

Paypal is turning into scam artists. They have no real sellers protection. If you get scammed or carded by a fraudster, paypal just permenatly limits ur accout... they dont sort out the issue and issue refunds. Just boom, ur account is closed... like your the criminal... they are supposed to catch fraudulent activity before it clears right? Or better yet how about when theres been no complaints, no issues, just money coming in and suddenly they dont like your activity ! And want to keep your UNDISPUTED funds for 6 months.... they let you recieve money just so they can limit ur account and use your money! Shame.

[mohammad15]

Here is the thing say someone just opened an account be it on ebay or paypal then that accounts triggers multiple chargeback or stolen cards being used etc then i can totally understand but accounts that has been verified several times with passport drivers license bank accpunts etc and has been trading for years with thousands of 100% positive feedbacks and with zero chargebacks are supposed to be your prime customers and should at least help these account holders if something that infringes your terms after all they do keep changing there terms but instead they just close your accounts in an instant one thing i have learned is paypal brand risk management is paid on commisson based so the more accounts they close the more promotion they get but this sort of management is not known to its shareholders another point is paypal loudly claims they have 200 million plus customers who enjoys using them which i doubt the second part is true but fails to say those 200 million plus customers have no choice as they are tied with ebay as there default payment processor , I have spoken to an ebay office of president who said although paypal and ebay have split they have an agreement to keep providing payment service until 2019 and i recommended why they don't offer a payment service like amazon or third party payment service as that will boosts ebay sales drastically and was told they are already in process of that so i just wish ebay kicks paypal out then will suffer , Just remember paypal every god dam empire falls the higher you clim the further you will fall.